The 2025 Scotties Tournament of Hearts!
by Scott A. Sumner
It was fun to attend the 2025 Scotties Canadian Women's Curlingchampionships at the historic, 74 year old Fort William Gardens! Theevent lasted 10 days and attracted thousands of people from near andfar beyond to witness or participate is some world class curling
.I asked Nolan Thiessen, CEO of Curling Canada some questions about the event.
How has the week gone here at the Scotties at the Fort William Gardens?
“ It's been great here, third time is a charm. We have a really greathost committee and really great partners from tourism involved andexcited. It seemed like we could never quite get it off the ground, butonce we did this week it has been tremendous and we got a full housefor the final.”
There will be over 50,000 spectators here this week?
“ Absolutely we are going to have over 54,000 spectators. We will havebetween $10 and 15 million worth of economic impact for the city and wewill name our Team Canada, so a lot of good things.The competition has been great all week and the playoffs has beenreally, really good curling.
”When Curling Canada has the Scotties event in Thunder Bay how does itwork financially?
“ The city bids on the event to host and we come in, set up the fieldof play, set up the entertainment, The Patch and we have event staffand sponsorship, tickets sales the whole thing. The host organizersgenerate some revenue based on a percentage of ticket sales and it goesto be shared by all the curling clubs here in Thunder Bay. We make sureto get investment back in the sport which is really exciting. TheNorthern Ontario Curling Association also gets a cut to help invest inthe future.”
So the Scotties here in Thunder Bay has been a success?
“ It definitely has been a success, it's been a great event. On top ofthe economic impact we put 3000 school kids through here this week andcurling experiences in the schools to try and develop that nextgeneration of curlers.
”How does the Scotties relate to a Brier?
“ It's maybe a couple thousand less fans but other that it's the sameevent. The Canadian Womens curling championship and the Canadian Menscuring champion ship. We run them the same.”
Thunder Bay curler Krista McCarville and here team were fan favouritesrepresenting Northern Ontario. They did not make the finals but cameback after a 0-4 start to win 4 in a row to finish 4-4.Krista McCarville
“We want to keep moving forward, playing better. You never know whatcould happen, it doesn't look great for us but we want to finishstrong. We still want to win badly, we just have to move on. When arethe Scotties going to be held in Thunder Bay, probably not in mycurling lifetime, so I just want to enjoy it. My Holy Family schoolgrade 6 students will be here tomorrow. The Thunder Bay crowd have beenamazing, unbelievable. I wish we could give them more to cheer for butwe are doing the best we can right now.”
Paul Burke, Sport & Community Development Supervisor, City of ThunderBay
“ We expecting the opening and closing weekends will be packed andjammed and it will be a pretty amazing event for Thunder Bay. We hostedthe Scotties in 2022 during Covid and there weren't fans allowed forthe majority of the event but we were able to open up to about 500family members and volunteers on the final weekend. We also hosted thisevent in 1996.”“ You have all the players and their families here as well as a numberof fans that will travel to the Scotties event no matter where it isacross Canada. So many fans from out of town will create a big economicimpact for Thunder Bay in terms of hotel, restaurants etc.”
Team Homan won the event, including $100,000 first place prize,remaining undefeated in all 11 games! Next stop for them are the Worldsin South Korea!
